Month: July 2005

I’ve deceided not to go up to my Aunt’s after all.
I’ll still take time off from work, I do need a mini vacation, but I’ll
prob. go down to my mom’s place and also my dad’s place too. I’m trying
to be financially responsible for the first time in my life, and boy
does it suck:-) I am not putting things on my credit card any more
unless I have to. So no train tickets… I am going to try to arrange a
trip up there this fall. I only have one grandmother left, gotta try to
see her as much as I can…
I’m putting some stuff up on my site for my
students. Any of you that are mildly interested in photogrpahy might
enjoy some of the topics. I only have a darkroom primer up right now,
but I am working on an essay on composistion that will hopefully be up
by the weekend. Speaking of the weekend, I won’t have one. Why? Because
I’m a whore… Ramona asked if I’d work sunday and I said sure. The
good news is that I’ll have monday, thursday, friday, sat, sunday, and
monday off. Can’t wait!

I think my music collection in iTunes is creating
its own content now. There are songs that I have no recollection of in
there, some of them I can’t even imagine where they came from. The
other day I got not only a dance remix of Bow Wow Wow’s “Do you want to
hold Me”, but an *upbeat* Billy Holiday singing “My Man.” She did
leave out the stanza”He isn’t true/what can I do?/He beats me too…”
so that helped keep the song happy… I have no idea where these songs
came from, I’m not sure I would have put them in if I knew about them.
WOOT, just got 5 12av5 tubes. These are old TV sweep
tubes that, by all accounts, sound amazing wired in triode. I love the
idea of reusing old technology in new ways. This would be like reusing
8086 era motherboards in an amp and them sounding great! These tubes
were probably thrown out by the millions in the mid 80’s, there’s still
a lot left though. So now I’ve got one more amp project to think
about….

Haven’t been up to much recently. I found a Linux
port of Ultima IV that has been ported to most OS platforms. I’m
reliving part of my life when I was 14…. It’s scary how much of the
stuff I remember in that game. Sure wish those neurons were being used
for useful things. Looks like I’ll be going up to visit my grandmother,
aunt, and at least one of my cousins the first week of August. Beth
says she won’t be home due to work and a chem class she’s taking, but
Ed is home. Haven’t really talked to him much, it’ll be interesting to
see what he’s like.
I’m trying to organize my photo class so that we can
go to a darkroom for a class or two. I’ve got three regular students.
One is really interested, one is pretty interested, and the other seems
to be noncommittal at best. It would actually be easier with a larger
class, if 3 or 4 people said they weren’t interested, then we wouldn’t
do it. With just one, I’m not sure what we’ll end up doing. I’m going
to try to have some practical teaching next class. Assuming it doesn’t
rain, we’ll go outside and take pictures with me giving “helpful”
advice along the way. It’ll probably amount to showing how to hold the
camera properly, not leaning forward or backwards while taking
pictures, etc. Should be fun I suppose….
There was a bunch of bombings in Egypt on friday or
Sat. They don’t really bother me much. The explosions were targeting
rich tourist 4 star hotels along the Red Sea, not even close to Cairo.
In my mind, they were going after vacationing Israelis and Britons.
In the back of my mind I know that things (and people) blow up in that
area of the world, but some places are safer than others. One of the
safer areas seems to be downtown Cairo. In any case, until Cairo
becomes the scene of multiple bombings in a short time frame, my plans
won’t change.

Turns out that the bulb wasn’t bad, it looks like
it’s the bulb socke itself. Grr… I’m pretty confident in my abilities
to replace the socket and rewire the power cable, but I’m not too sure
on how to get in there. Part of me says fuck it, buy a cheap, working
enlarger and be done with it. I can resell the carrier for a lot of
what I paid for it. I dunno, what I’ll do, I’m a little frustrated
right now…

I don’t usually buy movies, but a guy at work was
trying to unload some dvds cheap. At first I didn’t bother looking, I
figured he’d have the crap I hate. Curiosity got the best of me, and
I’m glad it did. I picked up Roma, Satyricon (both by Fellini), Buena
Vista Social Club, Barry Lyndon, Paths of Glory, and last but not
least, Enter the Dragon. All of that for 15 bucks! Not too shabby…
I’ll watch them and if I feel like it I’ll flip them on Half.com or
something. The AC at work better be fixed tomorrow, it’s supposed to be
97. Not only was our AC not working properly, but there was no internet
and only one of our registers was working too. What a pain in the ass.
Things are supposed to be fixed tomorrow, but I’ve been through this
too many times before…

I applied for my passport today, woot! It might not
seem like a big deal to those of you that do a lot of travelling, but
to me it signals impending travel… You never know when you’ll have to
go to Reykjavík, Burkina Faso, or even Kerguelen, so it’s important to
have your passport… Should get it in about 6 weeks. Other than saving
money, this was the only thing I really needed to do this year for my
Cairo trip. I’ll apply to the program in January and hopefully have all
the money things worked out by April. Then it’s an airline ticket and a
visa from the Egyptian embassy and I’m set! SIGH, just one year and two
months to go…

OK, I’ve put up my short story on my
web page. I wrote it several years ago for a writing class. It isn’t
great by any means, but I like to try different things from time to
time. It’s under the “Art and Expression” tab… Be gentle…

Last week it was Battlestar Galactica, tonight it
was my friend John Dicker on C-Span. Actually, it might have been
C-Span2, but in any case, he was reading from his book, “The United
States of Wal Mart” and answering questions. He was his usual
entertaining self, and it sounds as though his book is well written.
I’m glad that he mentioned several times that labor relations, market
economies, manufacturing jobs, etc, are very complicated topics and do
not have simple solutions. I have told several people that I am going
to get this book, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to read it. I’m too
free market minded to really care about labor issues and the exporting
of manufacturing jobs. Things end up being done in the most efficient
manner if left to their own devices, and I’m convinced that everyone
benefits by this in the long run…
On a completely different note, I picked the wrong
day to drink a lot of coke. I was feeling pretty tired at work, so I
got a (rather large) coke with lunch. I don’t drink much caffeine, so I
knew that this was going to wind me up for the night. Unfortunatly, the
power went out around 8:30ish, and I had nothing to do. I tried calling
a few people, then I went on a rather brisk walk. Eventually the power
came on and I could get back to listening to music and screwing around
on the computer. I’ll be up late tonight….

I’ve done some things to my website. Hopefully I’ve
corrected the huge amount of space at the top of my gallery for those
of you running internet explorer on windows. Why would anyone use that
piece of trash anyway? If you must be on Windows, please download
Firefox, it’s the best thing you can do… I’ve added a few links and I
put up a picture of my father with his brother Mark on dad’s sailboat.
I hope to make some real improvements over the weekend.

I just realized how long I have let that preamp
project just sit there. It’s embarrasing, there’s only 3 things (that I
know of) that need to be taken out and put somewhere else. I just went
in and took out the two resistors and the one capacitor that I screwed
up. Now I just have to get some replacements, solder them in, and then
do some measurments. Oh yeah, I also need to cross my fingers and hope
I didn’t screw up too many other things too…
Even though I haven’t been really active with this,
I have learned some lessons. First of all, no minature 9 pin tubes!
What a pain in the ass it is to get the soldering iron in those tight
spaes. I have several large (and I do mean large) tube sockets for my
first power amp project. These suckers look as though they have acres
of space between the pins. That’s good for ham fisted solderers like
myself… I gotta save up for a power transformer so that I can at
least get the power supply built. Then a little more to save to get the
output transformers. Always a plan and no money, and now with the class
I have less time too!